With the existing technologies to integrate fixed and mobile devices, control session are established respectively for a Residential Gateway (RG) and a device accessing through the residential gateway (a fixed device or a User Equipment (UE)), and Quality of Service (QoS) policies are issued respectively in the sessions.
Particularly such a scenario occurs in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 12 that a 3GPP UE and a fixed device access through a fixed broadband network but traffic is offloaded from a Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) to a network which is not the core network of the operator (e.g., the Internet). In the scenario above, integrated policy and charging management is performed in such a way that a Policy and Charging Rule Function (PCRF) in the core network transmits a policy to the BNG, and the BNG schedules a resource in the fixed broadband network under the policy, that is, the eBNG functions as a policy enforcement entity, i.e., a Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF).
FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic architectural diagram of the scenario including an Internet Protocol (IP) edge gateway, a Residential Gateway (RG), a 3GPP UE or a fixed device (e.g., an IPTV device, etc.), and a Broadband Forum Authorization, Authentication and Accounting (BBF AAA), where the 3GPP UE or the fixed device accesses the IP edge gateway through the RG, the BBF AAA functions to authenticate a fixed access, etc., and policy and charging related information is transmitted via a Gxd interface between the IP edge gateway and the PCRF.
The BNG is a form of the IP edge gateway, and in the integration scenario, the fixed device accessing the fixed broadband network triggers the BNG to initiate an IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN) session establishment procedure to the PCRF in which the PCRF returns a policy to the BNG. FIG. 2 illustrates a particular flow thereof including:
Operation S201. The fixed device (e.g., a device accessing through the RG, etc.) accesses the fixed broadband network to trigger an access line authentication procedure;
Operation S202. The BNG transmits to the PCRF an IP-CAN establishment message including a subscription identifier (ID), an access line ID (including a physical access ID and a logical access ID) and other information;
Operation S203. The PCRF retrieves subscription information of the fixed device from a Subscription Profile Repository (SPR);
Operation S204. The PCRF makes a policy decision and derives a QoS rule with QoS parameters which can including a Quality of Service (QoS) Class Identifier (QCI), an Allocation and Retention Priority (APR), a Maximum Bit Rate (MBR), etc.;
Operation S205. The PCRF returns QoS rules to the PCRF, i.e., the BNG; and
Operation S206. The BNG performs differentiated control on data in the fixed broadband network under the obtained QoS rules.
As can be apparent, the respective devices are controlled individually in the existing QoS control mechanism.
In the fixed broadband access network, the RG is activated to trigger an IP-CAN session between the BNG and the PCRF, and the PCRF allocates a set of QoS rules for the RG; and alike when the fixed device is activated, or the 3GPP UE accesses the fixed broadband network in an NSWO manner, the PCRF also allocates a set of QoS rules for the BNG. Stated otherwise, the BNG needs to schedule a resource under the plurality of sets of QoS rules between the BNG and the RG. However since neither the relationship between the QoS rules allocated for the RG and the QoS rule allocated for the device (including the fixed device and the 3GPP UE) nor the correlation between the parameters of the two sets of QoS rules has been defined, the parameters in these QoS Rules have been independent of each other so far, but only the single devices can be controlled and the network resources have been underutilized.